Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Buzz on PaperCoterie

My Pretend Lawyer Made Me Write This: I have not been compensated for this post. I received a free, personalized journal from PaperCoterie when I visited the MomSelect Suite while at BlogHer. PaperCoterie is offering a $40 Promocode to me and more importantly, to anyone else who would like to use it. That means you. Yes, YOU. Details at the end of the post!

Official Press Release:

Salt Lake City, Utah – August 1, 2011 – Inspired by Kelly Corrigan’s book, Lift, Paper Coterie hopes to inspire its audience to take photographs and document the ordinary in creative, new ways. From August 1 through August 31, 2011 all visitors will receive a $40 credit to spend. There is no minimum purchase and visitors pay only standard shipping rates. Paper Coterie is an online circle of friends who are passionate about documenting the everyday through personalized photo books, calendars, wall décor, and other creative and innovative products. “We are extremely excited to be hosting Begin Anywhere Month and introducing Kelly and her books to our community,” said Melisa Jeffers of Paper Coterie. “Knowing how and where to start documenting can be one of the biggest challenges when it comes to memory keeping, and we hope that our Begin Anywhere event provides both inspiration and a starting point to our community.”

Registrants can choose from a beautiful selection of elegantly designed books and journals; calendars in several formats, home décor items and gifts, recipe cards and more. The $40 credit does not include shipping.

My first few visits to Paper Coterie were a little clunky - it seemed they were doing some updates/fixes at the time. Since then, my visits have gone smoother. The hardest part was deciding what to buy with the $40 promotional code. I flitted around - I had already received a personalized journal from Paper Coterie while at BlogHer and I wasn't in the mood for a photo book. Unfortunately, I don't need a growth chart for my babies who are now doing things such as walking, talking and GOING TO SCHOOL (because that airplane growth chart I linked to? Is wicked cool. And my babies? Are TALLER than those charts.)

In a democratic surfing move, I clicked on the Recipe section thinking it was probably just your typical recipe cards. Except I was wrong. Paper Coterie does not offer your typical recipe cards - they offer pretty recipe cards which are personalized. However, what really caught my eye was the cookbook section. Personalized cookbooks. As in "cookbooks with MY recipes IN them".

Hold your horses, Fannie Farmer.

Honestly? This post has been delayed because I can't drag myself away from making my own cookbook. And even while writing this, I've been clicking over and playing around with my cookbook-in-progress. Furthermore, during this whole process of finding recipes to add, I've been compiling hand-scribbled notes, things copied into my phone, and a mountain of print-outs. I have even searched emails for old recipes.

And I am putting them into my own cookbook. I am almost done with my first cookbook and therefore, MUST create a second cookbook.

This whole "make your own cookbook" is a new concept to me and Paper Coterie has made it fairly easy. You simply create an account, click on the recipe book of your choice and get started. That's it! You can stop mid-stream and save your project to complete later (I am on Day 3 of working on my cookbook.) I fumbled a bit with the actual editing portion at first but once I got the hang of it, the going was pretty fast. I do wish that I could do things like bold or italicize individual pieces of text within a text box, but perhaps, that will come in later versions.

In the meantime, I am pretty happy with the results:

That particular quirky style and font appealed to me, but if that's not your thing, they do have several styles to choose from (I will probably choose "On The Dot" for my 2nd cookbook). I cannot wait to finish this cookbook! Currently, when I go through my weekly meal planning on Sunday afternoons, I have to flip through papers, cookbooks and even my memory. Inevitably, I forget about certain dishes and eventually find myself in a cooking funk. I am looking forward to having my "loose" recipes contained within 1 or 2 books that I can flip through along with my other books cranked out by the Big Publishers.

Paper Coterie doesn't just offer cookbooks. So, I will stop my fangirl praise for a millisecond to mention that they do also offer photo books and journals, memory keepers, and decor items. In fact, I am also intrigued by their "Prompt Me" book's official description:

Start creating this engaging book built by Paper Coterie's Prompt Me tool. In the coming weeks, Prompt Me will create your book using your responses to a series of creative questions, fun prompts, and photos. Let Prompt Me help you document the beauty of life well lived. 28-page minimum book is printed on premium 50% recycled fiber paper.

I was SO tempted to do a Prompt Me book for this post, but was afraid of the time commitment - right now is a bit crazy.

Okay - here's the important part, right???

So what's in this for you??? Until August 31st, Midnight, any reader who visits www.papercoterie.com can use the promo code BEGINANYWHERE to receive a $40 credit. There is no minimum purchase necessary, and shipping is not included.

Truly, you'd be crazy to not check Paper Coterie out. Halloween is trickling into the stores and you know what that means.

2 comments:

I am so excited you wrote this! I signed up for an account with them right before they launched the site in hopes of making something for Christmas with my $40 credit. So now that I have the promo code, I better get on that!

Pick me! Pick me! That cookbook looks so cool! I'm going to check them out and see if I can't include some of the old family recipes that are in obscure spots and I'm the only one that knows where it is. Fits right in with my heirloom baking tangent. ;)

What's the Buzz?

I am Cagey, from Rancid Raves and this is my review site where I will talk about things that I have received for free. Truthfully, since I have a tendency to only accept things in which I am actually interested, I suspect (or hope?) this place will hold mostly positive reviews.

I can promise this: I will only give a positive review to something for which I would be willing to spend my own money.

About Me

A recovering workaholic, currently in the 12 Step program to Getting a Life. I worked my ass off to get a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree, a CPA license but then threw it all away in one fell swoop after giving birth to the results of my 2005 DNA Project. Arun arrived already needing a HAIRCUT on the delivery table. My God, the HAIR. I joined the Exclusive 2 Under 2 Club when we had our daughter Anjali in July 2007 and again, can you do the baby sign for HAIR? My very most favorite guy in the whole wide world happens to be my husband, Manoj, who puts up with not only my filthy mouth and obsessive nature, but also my honest temper, aggressive driving habits and crappy taste in television. Manoj is Indian - as in INDIA, the Land of Curry and the Infamous Asian Head Bob. He's really awesome, but actually doesn't do the head bob. Much to my disappointment.
This blog is forever sarcastic and irreverent, but rest assured that 5 days out of 7, I stop to think how utterly fortunate I am to have this crazy life of mine.